Sunday, January 20, 2013

Communication within television



My husband recently became a real estate agent. Real-estate is his passion and plays a big role in the types of shows we watch. There is a plethora of ‘home shows’ including House Hunters, Love it or List it, Million dollar listings and Property Brothers. As the supportive wife, I have been started watching these shows with him. One of the new shows we started watching is Property Brothers.
The premise of the show is brothers’ Drew and Jonathan Scott find couples that want to buy a house that is out of their price range. They convince them a fixer upper is the way to go. The show follows the challenges and benefits of doing a renovation.
When I watched the show with no sound I realized how much of an impact nonverbal communication has on communication. The facial expressions of the couples said a lot. For example, when they went into the decoy home the facial expressions were of excitement and awe until they realized the home wasn’t affordable and the instant shift to disappointment and anger when they realized they couldn’t afford the home. Watching the process of renovating the home I could tell through the body language and expressions what they couples were feeling. It was often a rollercoaster of ups and downs between excitement and frustration/anger.
Watching the show with sound made me more aware of how nonverbal and verbal communication goes together and can contradict each other. For example, the couple’s non-verbal communication was clearly showing excitement and the verbal communication supported that. However, there was an situation during the renovation when the body language of the couple clearly showed anger and defensiveness but the verbal language was contradicting that.
Watching the show with both the sound on and off made me more aware of the detail involved in communication. I often listen to what is being said rather than paying attention to the non-verbal cues. This assignment made me focus more on the message nonverbal communication rather than verbal language.
           

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